Gallery of Student Design Work – looking for feedback

[Jeff]

One thing that I would like to add to Boat Design Net in the next 4 - 6 months would be a section which features student design projects. What I envision is contacting all the schools on the list(s) and asking for a variety of student projects to feature. Each student project feature page would include a 2-3 photos of models or renderings, a reduced scale lines drawing, and a summary of the design goals, unique features, techniques, analysis, and/or software used, and possibly a brief conclusion as to how successful the student feels the project is and where they are going from here.

This composite gallery of student work would be arranged
- by Student / Designer
- by School
- and by Project Type

So you will be able to browse based on any of the above. Each project would also include a link to the student's contact information and their own web site (if desired) in case other designers had comments or prospective employers wanted to contact them. There would also be a link to the student’s School.

I believe our visitors would find it quite interesting, and I think this would be a good content area for our site. Students would appreciate a greater audience for their work and if they desired, additional feedback from other designers. This would also help students to start building name recognition and possibly even get additional job offers. And it would be good for the schools so that people could get a better idea of the types and quality of projects done at various levels in different design programs.

As a secondary stage once the gallery is established we could also add the element of a design competition, selecting the top 3 or top 5 projects submitted over the previous 12 months to receive additional exposure. A year or two down the road as our site continues to grow, maybe we could add scholarship money, or possibly work with a software company to provide a license to the winner(s) each year.

I think the best way to approach this in order to get a good variety of projects and to try to represent work from as many schools as possible is to talk with each school individually, so any additional contacts would be appreciated.

Also any feedback regarding this idea would be appreciated.

Jeff

[8knots]

jeff
As a soon to be student,I would welcome the exposure to the trained eye of prospective employers or clients. name recognition is the key to asking a client to pay the required fees for the design of there dream boat. i would love to participate in a design contest simply to see how my potential compititions mind is working, it will allso help us new guys develop a FEEL for what sells. being able to keep up with the design trends or fads of the day are important. I think it will be hard for any one firm to establish a truly new fad rather the industry as a whole will shift the design process where most firms will be selling BASICLY the same thing. anyway sorry to ramble. in a nutshell we new guys can use all the help we can get! and i think you will find the participation level high. 8 kts

[Gades]

Jeff that's a good idea. In another forum I already asked other students to comment their projects, but no-one replied. But I think that this forum has the potential for it.

Within the next few days I will submit a project I was working on last year. Now I'm also working on another one; so will it be OK to submit more than one project per student?

[Jeff]

Absolutely. I don't see any reason to limit the number of projects. What I am thinking of is creating a page (or more) per project and then organizing them all with a simple database by thumbnail, student/designer, year, project type, school, program type, and any other criteria which would be of interest. The more good projects we can feature, the better this gallery will be.

The only possible exception would be once we introduce a competition with financial or real-value prizes in which case it might be more fair to have one entry per person, in which case we would simply ask those who submit multiple projects to choose one for judging... but this is a still a little while off as it will take some time to organize and to develop the sponsorship necessary, and I would like to have a gallery with a variety of student work established first. And I think the first stage has a lot of value just in itself, to simply show a variety of great projects which deserve a larger and a continuing audience, and for this stage the more projects the better.

(And I've already had a glimpse of your work, so I think they will be very nice projects to feature )